TWO Forest A-Level physics students have won a top national award for an experiment they devised.

Isaac Smith and Lyall Wood were awarded gold in the British Physics Olympiad, a competition open to schools across Britain and sponsored by Oxford University.

Their brief was to devise and carry out experiments to determine the relationship between the depth of a body of water and the time taken for a wave to complete a full cycle.

Isaac and Lyall began working on the problem last October – three months after the competition opened – and initially went to the school’s science technicians for help.

They stepped up their work as the Christmas holidays approached and with a fresh lockdown predicted to ensure they had enough results from which to draw conclusions.

During lockdown, they carried on with the project, sharing their writing, graphs and tables online.

As well as conducting the experiment, they had to research how to present their findings in the correct way, reading scientific papers and even borrowing university essays written by their physics teacher Chris Jones.

Sixth form academic mentor at Wyedean Maureen Stephens said: “We are extremely proud of the success achieved by these students, who so enjoyed undertaking the project, which has equipped them with fantastic skills for their next steps in their chosen fields.

“Isaac is planning to study medical physics and Lyall is not sure whether to study maths or physics – or perhaps both.

“The students are very pleased that their project was so well received and wish to thank Mr Jones, Ms Yeh and the science technicians – especially Steve Robinson – for the help and encouragement they received.”